Today was Monday, June 22, 2009.

I've been neglecting my blog. Oh well. It must be the anime and the sleeping and the...

...wait for it...

... (here it is -->) hacking my phone! Yes, I have finally figured out how to mack my phone.

After fussing about with the drivers and such, and trying several programs, I came out with a couple of awesome hacks/mods for/to my phone, all thanks to this site.

So, now, my phone has:

• blue clock numbers with "aM" and "pM"
• multiple menu themes (including the Android, BB Storm, and even the iPhone! [my favorite, though, is the "Slide" theme] )
• customized backgrounds (only 2 so far, I ran out of ideas)

I also made a "light tent" out of a shirt of mine and a small table and took an awesome picture of my Rubik's cube (the second is after editing):

This morning is Thursday, June 18, 2009.

I decided to start doing morning posts, since I can. (this post includes real-time events, so be careful you don't put your head into a time paradox. Those are confusing.)

I decided to test the video-playing/rendering capabilities of my phone. So, I have a nice long 20 minute video in two versions playing on my phone and computer as I type. The audio syncs nicely, but the phone's video is about 1/2 second late. Oh well. Maybe I should test it with the converted file also. (few minutes later) Well, the converted video has lag also on the computer, so the phone's lag is only about 1/8th of a second (please note: all time measurements are estimated.)

I decided on it a while ago, but I haven't said anything yet, so I'll say it now. My rover project, in its current form, will be codenamed Raptor, because I said so. It looks really awesome (notice how I haven't put any pictures yet?) so yeah, when it's in its final version (or tomorrow) I'll put pictures. Now I'm trying to get the rebuilt light sensor array working.

My flashlight is oficially dead. Sadly. So now, I'm trying to buy a new one. Darn. $45 is the cheapest I should get now...too bad I wasted ~$32...

I fail at treading water. It's embarassing, but I've gotten over it. Then yesterday, while my friends were trying to teach me how to tread water, things got a little out of control...luckily, I didn't drown. So, here's a tip: if someone says they're panicking, belive them, rather than splashing water in thier face.

I stuck my two polar bears together (one from KBF and one from a promotion party) and it looks cute.

I'll just stick that manga part in here too: Stupid Japanese art, why do you have to be so addicting and awesome? Seriously, that book has me thinking the guy is cute too (NOT in a homosexual gay way, though.) Stupid stupidness. Really. Oh well.

I'm running out of things to write, so I'll go eat something. Goodbye!

Have fun with the rest of your day!

P.S. Adam, did you purposefully disable comments on your blog?

Yesterday was Tuesday, June 16, 2009.

Anyways, I went on a trip to Oxnard, CA, so for the past two days I didn't exactly have access to a computer. Darn. But, I did bring along:

• two manga books
• my Rubik's Cube
• my cellphone and the chargers required for it
• 14 episodes of an anime on said cellphone

First, I'm going to mention that, in our group, I was the only person under the age of 20 (though the second youngest came in at 21) making me the only teenager. Great. Luckily, I had my cellphone...and unlimited texting.

Anyways, those items provided enough enjoyment for the first ride, toward Universal Studios.

But I didn't actually go in. The decided rendezvous point was outside, in US's Citywalk. We ate, used the bathroom, then (5 of us) piled into another car headed for Knott's Berry Farm.

And I actually did go there. Basically, it wasn't exactly boring, but not really exciting, either. I rode one ride: the Southwest Sidewinder, I believe. All the other time was either spent waiting in line, waiting for other people to get off rides, or winning some (2) polar bears by throwing ping-pong balls*. There was also funnelcake, which really wasn't like I thought it should be...imagine, the funnel cake is covered with 1/2" of "powdered sugar" then topped with strawberry jam. Sounds good? Now, I'll describe the cake: imageine pea-sized globs of pancake mix stuck together in a large, plate-sized circle, that is fried, and crunchy. Eww.

But I ate it anyways.

Near the end of the day we proceeded to: wait for my aunt to finish choosing what jewelry she wanted. Honestly, we spend like, an hour there. Oh well. She gave me a [promotion] present of a large monetary amount.

Night 1:

I'm saying Night 1 simply because there was a lot that happened. It included: turning off the light so my parents could sleep, then using my cellphone as a flashlight to finish reading my second manga book, then trying to register my phone for mobile blogging, then watching it give me a malformed request, then me talking to myself, then finally, around 2, me actually going to sleep.

Day 2:

This day wasn't nearly as interesting, since no theme parks were involved. Oh well. I'd say, the highlights were: getting to sleep in a car under a tree with (all) the windows 1/3 open for a couple of hours, and eating/drinking a cinnamon pretzel/strawberry shake combo. Boring things included [forced] shopping, and, the drive back (since I had already read everything).

I'm sure that sometime later on I'll remember all the awesome things I did away from the computer, but until then, I'm going to stop here. (Now that I have my phone connected to this blog, I don't think that should be a big problem now, though.)

There's a bit about the manga book I'm reading, and something else about the people I texted, but that'll go in somewhere else

Today is Sunday, June 14, 2009

Before I forget anything else, I'll just make a quickie post:

While eating lunch at a local In-n-Out, one of my previous school's teacher and counselor sat down beside us. While that was very cool, I didn't say hello since I didn't have either of them as teachers. Oh well. What I did notice that both of them had fairly large and expensive looking digital cameras, most likely Nikon...and they were talking about photography and such. It's really fun to see people you usually only see working in their off-time; it gives you a perspective that says (or, would say for them) "We have lives outside of school, too, you know...". Of course, I already knew that...

I saw Disney Pixar's "UP". I'm not at all a review person, and I'm not going to spoil the plot, but in any case, it was a pretty interesting movie. It wasn't bad, but since it was partially directed at a different age group, I wasn't exactly thrilled by it. In any case, whatever time I spent watching it went fairly well.

In older news, I updated the programming for my rover. It now works faster, using a scanning ultrasonic sensor and stall detection to avoid obstacles. When my sister gives back the camera I'll have a video of that too.

I still need to get that video of the various dancing food items, so wait for that.

Random Edit: I just remembered; anyone hear of the DualSaw? Apparently it's some tool with two blades that rotate in opposite directions. All I have to say about this is, if you have on and you're trapped in a metal box, you're good, unless someone unplugs it. Darn.

What else...Oh. My flashlight died. It was extremely nice, too. Oh well. Maybe I can fix it. I'll keep you updated.

Currently I'm in the process of downloading several (22 episodes in 3 parts each...ugh!) episodes of a certain Anime show for a trip I'm going on. Wish me luck?

On a side note of that, the Anime Expo is going on the beginning of July over at the LA Convention Center. So I'm trying to go to that, along with one of my friends. Wish me more luck?

Huh. This didn't end up quick at all. Oh well.

Have fun with the rest of your day!

Anyone ever notice... (1)

Anyone ever notice:

• my friend kept talking about how she was getting to be a student coach cause she got higher than 4th place, while I wouldn't be able to since I got like, 14th place cause I messed up. Anyone else ever notice how "14th place isn't that bad!" doesn't make you feel any better? Really?
• Anyone ever notice how reverse psychology would be bad? (i.e. when you really mean something but people do the opposite anyways) Like, "Don't look, I'm arc welding." If you didn't know that you needed a welding helmet to look at something that darn bright and you looked then went blind...that would suck. And "Looking at arc welding without proper protection can cause blindness, so don't look cause I'm arc welding." isn't exactly the short and sweet warning you want to announce every time...of course, I don't arc weld, but oh well. I served my purpose.

And I'll just throw this random bit in since it fits with the first part:

If you say "Duck!", would people actually duck or would they look up to see what's happening? My brother says you're supposed to say "Watch out!", but won't that make people watch instead of duck? And if you say both, I can assure you someone is going to reply, "Why am I watching out for a duck?"

Of course, taking reality and common sense into account, most people would duck while watching out in either of the first two cases (the third always ends up like the other case, though...sometimes).

Yesterday was June 11, 2009.

I haven't posted in a while. Oh well.

Yesterday was the day that I, Joey, promoted from 8th grade and the middle school I spent a very...umm, exciting? varying? educational?...experience for three years. I also said goodbye to a lot of friends. That was hard. Luckily, I didn't cry outrageously...

Before that, on Wednesday, it was ;normal school, then after school I invited Adam over...then I fell asleep, then I woke up when he arrived, then he further investigated the items in my room (a.k.a LEGO boxes again) then we revived my single-acting pneumatic engine with a bicycle pump and played with that for a while. Then he left. Oh well. We never did get to make that VEX forklift. And now he's going to Taiwan. I wish him the best.

Back to Thursday: After the promotion ceremony, we (my family and I, plus two of my friends) went to Pat and Oscars where I ate salad, four bread sticks and seven chicken "wings" and a slice of pizza. (I was hungry. Be quiet.)

Then an hour later I went to a pool party, where I unceremoniously (I just wanted to stick that word in here somewhere and I guess it fits here best) failed at swimming, in-pool volleyball, water balloon tosses, hula-hooping, and having pictures taken of me. Oh well. It was fun anyways. Plus, my friend Brittany was kind enough to get promotion presents for us; I got a polar bear type thing.

Some highlights of the party included pouring cups of cold pool water onto the people in the spa, filling up water balloons in the pool (from these nifty heater pump outlet things; I'm not exactly sure what happened) then squirting people with them, rolling hula-hoops across the surface of the water, and, umm, watching mini-marshmallow as, a grape, a chocolate-chip, and a carrot dance to some music:

[Video will be added when I find my camera. Ugh.]

Posts about Friday will come in the afternoon.

Have fun with the rest of your day!

Today was Saturday, June 6, 2009.

Darn. I get to recap three days. How fun.

Wednesday:

Huh. I don't remember too much about Wednesday. I probably had my Rubik's Cube. Oh well.

Thursday:

Huh...Thursday got the short stick too...

Friday:

I'm guessing my long+short term memory only goes up to one day...

Anyways, Friday was a conglomeration of things. First it was school. By this day I know Adam and Ryan (another kid who sits at our "table"; a lot more bearable than Jared) had their own Rubik's Cube, so us three did that for most of the time in BE...I can't really remember anything else since it was just school...

After, I rode home then went to my friend Lea's birthday party at a park near our school (you'll see why). I then proceeded to out-ninja everyone else (considering I was the only ninja there) and have lots of fun at the park. Apparently, climbing up onto to the play equipment then sitting on a suspended inverted see-saw causes several problems: 1)people taking your right shoe 2) the knife-edge-like metal reinforcement bar kills your hand and/or arm 3) it's not a very good idea to use something that people can move as a support when you're 6 feet in the air. Fortunately, you do get one plus: it's fun to wrap your legs around the support-pole and slide down like a fireman.

After that, we walked from the park to the school for our end of the year party. First off, it was dissappointing. No arguing that. We had three arcade-videogame booth things, one "acoustic tent" set up in front of the hired DJs, an inflatable basketball shootout type thing, and an inflatable twister mat. The only interesting thing in that last sentence was the face that --> people tried to dunk into the hoops in the basket ball thing --> the hoops were 3 feet away from the edge --> people ran, then jumped to dunk --> the momentum of the people jumping (most notably Conner) would move the WHOLE basketball type thing backward (and sometimes cause it to tip over completely...CONNER...) --> the fan, in the back, then got eaten byt the thing it was inflating. When the whole dunking thing was banned, people then proceeded to throw mini-basketballs from 30 feet/10 yards into 2/3 foot dimaeter hoops. A lot of people missed and a) the balls bouced off the top of the hoop thing into the surrounding grass or b) it would completely (and this is a really overshot shot) overshoot the hoop-thing and bounce off the concrete behind. Wonderful./

After that hooplah (bad pun) Yearbooks were distributed. I then proceeded to have everyone sign my yearbook upside-down, part of my three year tradition. (with the exception of my ultimately non-cooperative friends who I then forced to sign it sideways.) I proceeded (how many times have I said that word?) to patroll the schoolground looking for friends. Unfortunately, that didn't work. (I tried to ge tthe photographer's signature and that didn't work either). Then it ended and I rode home with Evan, Even's mom, and Adam.

Saturday:

Ooh, that's today!

I proceeded to wake up, then jump on the computer, then talk to my friend, then program my rover, which I finally got to follow a line! I had to reformat it a little, but it works! (using my, *ahem*...hacked thingimibobber...)

Then I went to see "Terminator: Salvation". It has Arnold S. naked. I didn't need to see that. REALLY. DIDN'T. NEED. TO. SEE. THAT.

To top it all off, I got a piece for my flashlight in the mail today (all the way from New York, and for free!), so now it can run on 1 AA battery and still light up my entire living room. Awesome pwnage.

I guess that's it for now.

Today was Wednesday, June 3, 2009.

So today, I brought my Rubik's Cube to school again. Honestly, people get so distracted when they see someone solving it... I also raced Jared, who had his cube today, and the final score was about 3:5 Jared. I should practice more, but I don't care. ~2 mins is good enough for me.

I got my robot/rover working again; after managing to revive its programming software I made it..umm...do something. I still need to get its bluetooth funstions to work...with the computer. It works nicely controlling it with my phone, which is pretty fun. 

Honestly, maybe sometime I'll break out my cellphone, tap a few things, and the box on the table starts driving around. How fun.

 I also printed out a line-following type thing on a couple sheets of paper. (12 to be exact). Hopefully I'll have something that drives around that course sometime soon. But batteries take a while to charge. Darn.

Have fun with the rest of your tomorrow!

Today was Tuesday, June 2, 2009.

Ok. School was pretty much the same, except for the fact that I had my Rubik's Cube. That made it a bit more bearable. But a lot more distracting. Oh well. At least I can solve it now. Hooray!

As for the rmance part of my life, people keep asking me whether or not I asked out the girl I liked that one day I talked to her. Apparently she talks about these kinds of things. Oh darn.

As for the robotics part of my life, I reformatted my rover a bit. It was tall, and now it is short(er). But at the cost of ground clearance. But that's okay; this thing isn't going to be going off-roading anytime soon (unless you call hardwood flooring and carpeting off-road). I've also looked into programming again. We'll see how that goes.

Today was Monday, June 1st, 2009.

Ugh. I hate Mondays.

Anyways, random list time:

• There's this door in my band room that doesn't open all the way (i.e. it opens halfway and then just out into the walkway). I wish I could a) kill move it or b) remove it.
• Dictionaries hurt. PLEASE don't ask how I know. They just do.
• Hmm. I seem to have run out of random stuff. Oh darn.

Well, that 's about it for now.